1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to stents, stent loading, stent contracting and stent delivery systems and their respective methods of use. Some embodiments of the invention are more specifically directed to stent loading and crimping systems and their methods of use.
2. Description of Related Art
A stent is a generally tubular device that is used to support a bodily lumen. A stent is typically delivered to a desired bodily location via a catheter. Often the stent is loaded onto a portion of the catheter, such as a balloon or other region of the catheter shaft. In some stent delivery systems the stent is crimped to the catheter in order to minimize the profile of the stent on the catheter and to prevent undesired movement of the stent relative to the catheter shaft.
A number of techniques for loading and contracting a stent to a catheter shaft or balloon are used. One such technique utilizes a crimping head having an iris to constrict the diameter of the stent by moving a plurality of crimping fingers radially inward against the stent. Such an iris based crimping head is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,629,350, the entire content of which is incorporated herein by reference. While such iris type mechanisms have demonstrated successful results in crimping both balloon expandable stents and self-expandable stents, it is known that in some cases, particularly involving some types of self-expanding stents, the stent can become caught or snagged within the gap(s) between the iris fingers. As a result, the stent and/or the iris fingers may be damaged. This reduces the life of the fingers and necessitates changing the iris fingers more often.
It would be desirable to provide an iris type crimping head having reduced or no gaps between the fingers.
All U.S. patents, applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.